Gender and Climate Change

1. Gender and Climate Change Julian Walker Development Planning Unit, University College London Julian.walker@ucl.ac.uk Bridget Burns WEDO bridget@wedo.org

2. Gender? “Gender” refers to social relations between, and among, women and men and girls and boys • Distinct from ‘Sex’, which refers to the biological differences between women and men • Distinct from ‘Women’ as the basis for a political, institutional and analytical approach Gender is socially constructed, and intersects with other social relations (eg age, race, disability, sexuality, religion).

3. Gender Equality ‘Gender Equality is the equal enjoyment by women and men of socially valued goods, opportunities, resources, and rewards. The aim is not that women and men become the same, but that their opportunities and life chances become and remain equal.’ (OECD, DAC, 1998)

4. Gender Analysis DPU Gender Policy and Planning Programme, 2013

5. What is the relationship between climate change and gender, and how is it treated in policy?

6. Climate Change

7. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour

8. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour How people experience climate change is affected by their position in the gender division of labour – ie their gender roles, and their access to and control over resources…

9. Gendered impacts of climate change Climate Change Gender Division of Labour

10. Gendered impacts of climate change Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Adaptation and Mitigation practices

11. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Gendered impacts of climate change Adaptation and Mitigation practices

12. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Gendered impacts of climate change Adaptation and Mitigation practices

13. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Gendered impacts of climate change and CC Interventions Adaptation and Mitigation practices Climate Change Interventions

14. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Gendered impacts of climate change and CC Interventions Adaptation and Mitigation practices Climate Change Interventions

15. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Gendered impacts of climate change Adaptation and Mitigation practices Arguments 1: The impacts of climate change are gendered These gendered impacts reinforce the importance of climate change as a development issue. Environmental instability exacerbates existing inequalities.

16. Gendered Impacts of Climate Change

17. Arguments 1:Discussion Focusing only on this set of arguments can lead to women being portrayed as ‘vulnerable’ / ‘victims’? What are the problems with this?

18. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Gendered impacts of climate change Adaptation and Mitigation practices Arguments 2: Gender is instrumental to climate change progress. How does an awareness of gender/ response to gender relations affect progress (+/-) on climate change? Cancun Agreement I. 7 recognises “…that gender equality and the effective participation of women and indigenous peoples are important for effective action on all aspects of climate change”.

19. Arguments 2: A gender perspective is instrumental to progress on climate change Women, as well as men, are users of energy and natural resources. This means that effective climate change policy needs to be based on gender analysis to: • Understand the roles and resource uses of different groups of women and men (eg household vs productive energy consumption, different forms of use of common property resources); • Be based on the environmental knowledge of different groups of women and men (eg resource use, DRR adaptation); • Engage with attitudinal change amongst different groups of women and men (appealing to gender norms about production or care?); • Draw on the contributions of different groups of women and men (environmental management, voluntary labour?); • Appeal to different constituencies of women and men to provide political support to climate change interventions.

20. Arguments 2: Discussion What can be some problems of focusing on the positive role of women as ‘altruistic stewards of the environment’?

21. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Gendered impacts of climate change and CC Interventions Adaptation and Mitigation practices Climate Change Interventions • Arguments: 3 • We need to recognise how climate change interventions affect gender relations, gender equality and the gendered impact of climate change (+/-)? • Climate change interventions should be socially just. • Inequality exacerbates a fragile, unsustainable global system.

22. Climate Change Gender Division of Labour Gendered impacts of climate change and CC Interventions Adaptation and Mitigation practices Climate Change Interventions • We therefore need to assess how climate change interventions approach the gender division of labour. Do they: • Make assumptions about it? (essentialisms and stereotypes?) • Use a women/ men binary generalization? (ignoring intersectionality) • Exploit it? (instrumentalizing women?) • Attempt to transform gender relations to make them more just?

23. Cancun Agreement: E. Economic and social consequences of response measures … “responses to climate change should be coordinated with social and economic development in an integrated manner, with a view to avoiding adverse impacts on the latter, taking fully into account the legitimate priority needs of developing country Parties for the achievement of sustained economic growth and the eradication of poverty, and the consequences for vulnerable groups, in particular women and children”.

24. Climate change interventions and gender justice There is a need for the gender analysis of climate change interventions if they are to be socially just. This means asking How do climate change interventions affect the gender division of labour? Are the costs, and benefits, distributed in ways which are socially just?: • Do climate change interventions rely on unpaid, caring or community work? (if so, whose unpaid labour? - gender, age, class?) • Where climate change interventions create livelihood opportunities, who has access to these? Where interventions affect livelihoods negatively, who is affected? • Who gets legal and/ or de facto access to resources delivered as part of climate change interventions? (eg green climate funds, common property regimes?). How can the intra-household allocation of resources be influenced? • Who has a voice/ representation in the governance of climate change interventions? Which women/ men are excluded? (How) can climate change governance contribute to gender equality in governance more generally?

25. Gender in the UNFCCC • 1992 Rio Earth Summit • Agenda 21 • Women have a vital role in environmental management and development. Their full participation is therefore essential to achieve sustainable development. • Three Conventions • United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) • United Nations Convention on Combating Desertification (UNCCD) • United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

26. Gender in the UNFCCC- Beginnings • The UNFCCC was the only convention of the three sustainable development conventions that did not have women or gender language in its text • In 2001, at COP 7 in Marrakesh, the first decision was adopted at the UNFCCC recognizing gender equality, particularly women’s participation as needed to achieve progress on mitigating and adapting to climate change at all levels; Gender equality was also introduced as NAPA guidelines

27. Gender in the UNFCCC- Beginnings • Women and gender activists and civil society organizations participating informally in the UNFCCC negotiations for several years including LIFE E.V., GenderCC and others • Gender equality is challenging to introduce into the technical negotiations

28. Gender in the UNFCCC- 2007 • Bali- 13th COP - Opportunity to change the conversation and bring social issues into the technical space of the UNFCCC • Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA), founded by WEDO, IUCN, UNDP and UNEP, formed with aim to have a new agreement on climate change be gender-responsive • Now over 80+ intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations are a part of this alliance all in favor of gender-responsive climate change policies, programs and practices

29. Gender in the UNFCCC- 2007 to 2010 • Outreach to 100+ Parties • WEDO partnered with ENERGIA to coordinate advocacy team • WEDO and ENERGIA joined forces with GenderCC, WECF, LIFE e.v. to establish provisional Women and Gender Constituency • More than 25 position papers

30. Gender in the UNFCCC- 2010 to NOW • Cancun Agreements secured eight references to women and gender across all major sections • Further references secured in decisions and subsidiary bodies in 2011 • 2012, COP18 Gender Decision

31. Current activities: Gender in the UNFCCC • Adaptation—should be guided by gender-sensitive tools and approaches (in National Adaptation Plans) • Mitigation—Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) activities should include gender considerations in safeguards; implementation of response measures to climate change must give full consideration of the positive and negative impacts on vulnerable groups, including women

32. Current activities: Gender in the UNFCCC • Technology—preparation of technology projects and strategies for implementation to take into account gender considerations to support action on mitigation and adaptation and enhance low-emission and climate-resilient development • Finance—Green Climate Fund is taking a gender-sensitive approach in its objectives and guiding principles, with consideration to gender balance in its selection of board members, secretariat and stakeholder participation and addressing gender aspects in its operational modalities; Adaptation Fund Board revised operational policies and guidelines to encourage gender considerations in proposals

33. Current activities: Gender in the UNFCCC • Capacity Building—capacity building activities take into account gender aspects. Work Programme of Article 6 to the Convention on Education, Training and Outreach—Gender is a cross-cutting issue and principles should be guided by a gender approach; women’s participation is key in several elements of the work programme • Approaches to Loss & Damage associated with climate change impacts—enhanced understanding of loss and damage impacts on populations already rendered vulnerable, including women; collection of gender-disaggregated data to asses risk of loss & damage

34. Gender in the UNFCCC • From women as passive victims of climate change to agents of change • From gender as an issue of women’s participation to gender as a lens of analysis • Evidenced by mainstreaming of gender equality issues throughout all of the major thematic areas

35. Action Points ? New Climate Change Agreement in 2015: Push for human rights and gender equality focus • Policies over the past years have shown that climate change has a human face and responses to climate change must account for differential needs linked to age, ethnicity, race, sex, geography • A 2015 climate change agreement will have most impact if it is human rights based and gender responsive. Translation of existing policies into practice • Many climate change policies are currently gender-sensitive, but need to be implemented in practice. This implies: • More specific policy language. • Development and application of toolkits, knowledge products, checklists, and procedures to implement policy commitments. • Adequate resourcing (budgets and staffing) for policy commitments on gender. • Monitoring and reporting on progress on policy commitments on gender equality. Defining indicators for progress.

36. Action Points ? Policy Language: Cancun C (Capacity Building) para 130: Decides that capacity-building support to developing country Parties should be enhanced with a view to strengthening endogenous capacities at the subnational, national or regional levels, as appropriate, taking into account gender aspects, to contribute to the achievement of the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention… What does this mean?

37. By the Numbers • 2008-2012 Desk Research on women’s participation in the UNFCCC to understand gaps in implementation of decisions.

38. By the Numbers

39. By the Numbers

40. By the Numbers

41. By the Numbers

42. By the Numbers • Gender imbalances vary across regions • Lower portion of women in higher levels of decision-making • Capacity building and innovating strategies are necessary to implement words on paper to strengthen women’s participation; particularly in the areas of finance and technology

43. Beyond the Numbers Beyond women’s participation, gender has been recognized as a lens of analysis, and decisions have included gender sensitive tools and indicators,gender considerations in implementation and gender expertise as a precondition for socially just, equitable and effective climate policy. This requires gender analysis tools for climate change actions.

44. Resources on Gender and Climate Change • Six part resource kit giving an overview of gender and climate change connections • Looks at policy, case studies, adaptation analysis, finance and advocacy tips • In partnership with the UNFPA, the toolkit also explores connections between population dynamics and climate change, highlighting the impacts of climate change on migration and access to health services, particularly reproductive health services http://www.wedo.org/themes/sustainable-development-themes/climatechange/climate-change-connections

45. Gender and Climate Fund Governance • Governing climate funds publication produced prior to governing document of GCF adopted • Explains processes of gender mainstreaming governance in other global financing mechanisms • Evidences the type of needed measures to be in place in governance structures of funds to make them gender-sensitive in their operationalization http://www.wedo.org/library/new-publication-governing-climate-funds-what-will-work-for-women

46. Gender and REDD+SES • REDD+ safeguards exercise-gender road maps (Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon) • Gender mainstreaming REDD+ Social and Environmental Standards. • The 2 booklet series includes lessons learned from action research in 4 countries and a toolkit that has a checklist for countries to develop gender-responsive REDD+ safeguards http://www.wedo.org/library/wedo-launches-from-research-to-action-leaf-by-leaf-getting-gender-right-in-redd-ses

47. Thanks Women’s Environment & Development Organization 355 Lexington Avenue, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10017 T: 212-973-0325 F: 212-973-0335 www.wedo.org Development Planning Unit University College London 34 Tavistock Sq London WC1H9EZ http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/dpu facebook.com/WEDOworldwide @WEDO_worldwide